


not exactly complex analysis

by ultranos



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 06:56:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1336207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultranos/pseuds/ultranos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A book, a blizzard, and a conversation that needed to happen.  In some order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not exactly complex analysis

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt by [counterpunch](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Counterpunch/pseuds/Counterpunch): "table, glass, cloak"
> 
> I'm playing with narrative style here. Trying for a looser, more conversational tone. Elsa continues to speak in math and parentheticals for me.

It's a blizzard outside. The wind is buffeting the castle, causing the glass windows to rattle in their frames. Inside, however, the fire is roaring merrily in the fireplace of the study. It's not her storm, and Elsa is curled up in an armchair with a book. For once, she can allow herself to read for pleasure, and not some treatise or history on whatever crisis her advisors have convinced themselves exists.

Of course, that's when the doors to the study slam open, causing Elsa's head to snap up so fast her reading glasses slide down her nose. Anna stands in the doorway, wrapped in a cloak that's more white than green due to the amount of snow clinging to it.

"Anna! What happened? Wait, nevermind, get closer to the fire first, before you catch a cold!" Elsa slips a bookmark between the pages and starts to stand before Anna waves her off.

"I'm fine! Really! I was just out with Kristoff when the storm hit," she says as she takes off the cloak. Thankfully for Elsa's nerves, Anna plops herself down next to the fireplace. "I swear, between you and him, you would think I've never seen snow before."

Something must show on her face, because Anna winces slightly. "Elsa, I really am fine. I wasn't out there long, and Kristoff got me home fast." Her voice is softer now, trying to reassure her. (That's she's here, she's safe, she's going to be warm and healthy and...) "You can sit back down now." And it's only now that Elsa realizes she's still halfway standing, stuck in an awkward position. She slowly sinks back down into the armchair, eyes never leaving Anna. She feels more than sees her glasses slip further down her nose and pushes them up distractedly.

(It's probably safe to say there is a part of her that will never stop being afraid for her sister when winter is concerned. It doesn't have to be her ice. But sometimes, she wakes up choking on her own scream, the memory of ice and not flesh beneath her fingers when she touched Anna for the first time in over thirteen years forcing her fingers into claws and her breath to freeze in her lungs.) (Four thousand seven hundred seventy-four days. And not counting. Not anymore.)

"So, what were you reading?" Anna asks, breaking Elsa out of her thoughts. "Not another report on grain production, I hope."

"Anna, those are important," Elsa starts, and then cuts herself off to stop from laughing at the look Anna gives her. "But no, I was reading this for pleasure."

"Oooh! What is it?"

Elsa shifts awkwardly. "It's, um, it's a series of papers by a scholar on iterative patterns, especially based on triangles, and the extrapolations thereof based on equations derived from his observations."

"Say what now?"

"...it's a book on math."

Anna just _looks_ at her (the "you used big words, but I am _so_ not an idiot and I know _exactly why you did_ " look, and when did Anna learn that look?) , before throwing herself backwards onto the ground dramatically, just barely missing the side table. "Oh my god. Elsa. That is not reading for fun. That's homework."

"I enjoy it," she retorts, a little defensively. Okay, so her choice of reading material isn't exactly thrilling. She puts the book on the side table and puts her reading glasses on top. "What were you doing out there anyway?"

Anna tilts her head up to look at her. "Kristoff was showing me some of the better spots for ice harvesting that he uses that are closer to town. He says the mountain has better ice and he can charge more for quality, but getting it is a pain." She blew a stray piece of hair, wet now from the melting snow, out of her face. "My tutors so did not go into the intricate economics of ice harvesting. Seriously, I feel a lack in my education here."

"Weren't you just complaining about my choice in reading material?"

"This is totally different! This is, I don't know, actually relevant." Elsa schools her face into a pout. Anna's eyes widen. "I didn't mean that in a bad way, just that this could be useful for us to know since, you know, we have people who actually depend on it! I didn't mean that the math was wrong, except it's boring, okay maybe not useless, that's bad and it's not useless aaand you are totally laughing at me."

At which point, Elsa gives up attempting to control her laughter. She doubles-over in the chair, laughing uncontrollably until she feels tears prick at her eyes. She gasps for breath and wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. Once she's gotten herself under control again, she looks up again to see Anna sitting up and staring at her with a strange look. "Anna?"

"I don't remember the last time I heard you laugh like that," she says softly.

It strikes her then, as she casts her memory back, that she can't remember either. It was probably Before. Most things, if she can't remember the last time they happened, are somewhat safely assumed to be from Before. Her life, she's found herself thinking lately, were she to graph it out on paper, would be a function with one very obvious discontinuity that throws off the notion of her life as a simple equation. (Actually, this is incorrect. There are two. Both equal the same constant, and she's sitting on the floor in front of her.) 

It was certainly not in the days and months After, because those are the days of the starkly brutal rules. The days in which she learned to take comfort in the cold and rigid rules and boundaries of math and logic. And in which she learned to see the beauty as well, for within the theorems and algorithms, there existed a place where math could even define the wildness of nature. The golden ratio and Fibonacci's numbers in the uncurling of a fern. The fractal beauty of a snowflake. It was the closest to being free that she could allow herself to be for years.

(While her sister could run through the ferns, climb the branches of a tree, and dance in the snow, Elsa could study them with the numbers and maybe they'd become almost real enough. And maybe that could almost be a shared tie.)

"Elsa?"

She blinks, coming back to herself. "I'm sorry. I was...elsewhere." She swallows. "I don't think I've laughed like that for...a very long time."

Something flashes in Anna's eyes, but it's gone before Elsa can even begin to identify it. She doesn't have to, though, because Anna straightens up and sets her jaw. "Well, we're just going to have to make up for that, aren't we?" And then she grins. 

Some unknown variable in the equation of her life finds its value, and she can see her life now spiraling out before her, wild and beautiful, with that all-important constant anchoring it. Elsa feels her lips move in an answering lopsided grin "I'd like to see you try."

"Even though it might destroy your image if everyone found out you read _math_ for fun."

There are worse things, really.


End file.
